Don’t repeat ‘bad history’

Rich countries squabbling over Covid-19 vaccine supplies must consider the situation in poorer parts of the world, WHO said, as the EU backtracked on a threat to restrict exports of shots to Northern Ireland in its growing row with Britain.

Outbreaks are raging around the globe with Covid-19 deaths nearing 2.3 million, while there are fears the less privileged will not get access to vaccine for a long time.

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus decried the skirmish in wealthy countries to secure large amounts of various vaccines against the coronavirus while few doses have yet to reach poorer nations.

"The pandemic has exposed and exploited the inequalities of our world," he told journalists on Friday, warning that there now was "the real danger that the very tools that could help to end the pandemic -– vaccines –- may exacerbate those same inequalities."

"Vaccine nationalism might serve short-term political goals. But it's ultimately short-sighted and self-defeating," he said.

The WHO co-leads the COVAX facility, which is working to procure vaccines and ensure doses are delivered equitably around the world.

The facility expects to begin delivering doses within a few weeks, and Tedros said the aim was for vaccination of health workers and older people to be underway in all countries within the first 100 days of 2021.

WHO has repeated that the only way to beat the pandemic and revive the global economy is to ensure that priority groups in every country are vaccinated.

Tedros urged the world avoid repeating past mistakes, pointing to the HIV/AIDS crisis, where wealthy countries acquired life-saving medicines nearly a decade before they became affordable in poorer countries.

He also pointed to the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009, when vaccines only reached poorer nations after the outbreak was over.

"I don't think that is a good history. It is bad history," he said.

EU BACKS OFF

British-Swedish firm AstraZeneca has said it can only deliver a fraction of its vaccine doses promised to the EU and Britain because of production problems, but both sides are demanding their pledges are met.

The EU threatened to restrict vaccine exports to Northern Ireland by overriding part of the Brexit deal with Britain that allowed the free flow of goods over the Irish border, but backed down after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson voiced "grave concerns".

The European Commission will "ensure that the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol is unaffected", the EU commissioner said in a statement late Friday.

That came after the EU released a redacted version of its contract with AstraZeneca, while announcing a mechanism that could allow it to deny the export of vaccines made on European soil.

The AstraZeneca vaccine on Friday became the third to get EU approval after Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, but it came under the shadow of the bitter diplomatic row.

AUSTRALIAN OPEN BOOST

With vaccine rollouts still in their early stages, movement restrictions remain among the few options for governments to try to stop the spread of Covid-19.

Surges have overwhelmed healthcare systems even in rich countries such as Britain and the United States, while Mozambique President Filipe Nyusi warned that hospitals across southern Africa were "rapidly reaching the limit of their capacities".

Citing concerns over the new strains, Germany on Friday said it would ban travel from countries where the variants are prevalent, starting this weekend, while Canada announced hotel quarantine for all new arrivals.

France has announced the closure of its borders to all non-EU travellers except for essential travel.

WUHAN VIRUS PROBE

A team of WHO experts investigating the origins of the coronavirus toured a propaganda exhibition celebrating China's recovery from the pandemic in Wuhan yesterday, after a meeting at the hospital that treated the first confirmed Covid-19 cases over a year ago.

Details of the trip have been scant so far, with the media kept at arm's length and information on the itinerary dribbling out via tweets from the World Health Organization experts instead of China's tight-lipped Communist authorities.

The group was driven to the Jinyintan Hospital, the first to receive officially diagnosed Covid-19 patients in late 2019, as the horrors of the virus emerged in the central Chinese city.

In a tweet, team member Peter Daszak welcomed the hospital visit as an "Important opportunity to talk directly w/ medics who were on the ground at that critical time fighting COVID!"

Yesterday afternoon, the team visited a cavernous exhibition that applauds the emergency response of Wuhan health authorities in the chaotic, terrifying early stages of the outbreak -- as well as the agility of the Communist leadership in controlling a crisis without precedent.